


this is the last time

by Ashling



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mad Max Fusion, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Pining, character development reflected through a relationship kind of?, for the record Angharad is like 25 years old in this and Zuko is like 22, oh god it's time to get into my emotions oh god, tfw Zuko is loved 🥺🥺🥺
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Zuko could never stay, but at least he can choose the way he goes.
Relationships: The Splendid Angharad/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8
Collections: Little Black Dress Flash 2020





	this is the last time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NekoMida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoMida/gifts).



> very sorry for lateness, hope the length helps ameliorate the wait somewhat
> 
> title from The National

When Zuko first swam ashore, he was grateful for the sun's heat drying him quickly, but after half an hour of walking down the beach, he began to sweat, and after a couple of hours, he waded out back into the water and dunked himself all the way in, partly to cool off and partly to try and rid himself of the fine coating of sand which made him itchy. After another hour, the sunlight gave him a headache, and he had to hide in the shade of some rocky cliffs to keep himself from fainting from the heat. He should have done this long ago, but he only had so much time. It was not something he could explain—what difference did an hour or two make?—but he felt a visceral pull drawing him south. This was to be his last night at the camp, and he wanted to savor every last bit of it.

Finally, the shape of the cliffs to his right began to seem familiar, and he spotted a tell-tale scrap of red fabric tied around a spar of rock. He was getting close. By then, the sunset has burned itself out, leaving behind indigo with a beginning speckle of stars, and the wind had turned the air so cold it felt spiteful. Zuko warmed himself every now and then with breath of fire, but still, the chill somehow managed to sap his energy much worse than the buffeting waves or the painful heat had. By the time he rounded the corner and saw the Crescent Bay beach camp spread out in front of him, some dozen tents each flying a different pennant, Zuko almost wished that he had not come back. He didn't have the strength it would take to see them all again—to see Angharad—and leave again. He should have stayed in his cliff-shade, curled up there, and boarded the ship in the morning without saying goodbye. Even standing there, seeing the outline of the tents against firelight, he felt himself waver.

Suddenly out of the darkness came a high-pitched whooping noise, oddly birdlike, and out of the cliff shadows to his right emerged Cheedo, clothed all in dark leather, face smudged dark with soot. Zuko nodded to her, pleasantly enough. He got the sense that she never quite liked him, but she didn't seem to dislike him either, and he admired her dedication to the night watch. 

But Cheedo, watching him with unblinking dark eyes, did not give him the go-ahead. So the two of them stood there, locked in a stare that made Zuko's instincts prickle and his palms spark, until out from behind a tent there was a new, taller silhouette, and a three descending notes of birdsong. At that, Cheedo relaxed, and then, after one last confirmatory glance at Angharad, slunk back into the shadows from which she came.

"She's acting like I'm banished." Zuko said, trying to smile through the unease in his stomach. "Is this because I said Nux's facepaint was weird?"

"No," said Angharad, and then, a touch more gently, "Come on." And she walked right past him, north, the way he'd come.

Zuko followed, because of course he did. "There's not much of a point in banishing me when I'm leaving tomorrow morning, is there." He could have winced at the sound of his own voice. It sounded rather desperate.

"You're not banished." With the camp out of sight, Angharad sat down on the beach, with her back leaning against a rock formation, well away from the tide. If it wasn't for the sound of her voice, Zuko couldn't have known she was there. When he sat in front of her, cross-legged, he felt strangely exposed; the rock's shadow hid her, but it didn't hide him.

"What is it, then?" he said.

"It's better if we talk where the others can't see us," Angharad said, and Zuko felt a startled leap of hope in his chest before she added, "it would only make them anxious."

He wished like hell he could see her face. "Well, now it's making me anxious."

She laughed. "They're not worried about me hurting you, Zuko."

"Oh." Wait. "They're afraid of _me_ hurting _you?"_

"There's something I need to tell you," she said, no trace of that laugh left in it, and fuck it. Zuko lit up a fire, just a small one, a glow in his upturned right palm, just enough so he could see her face in full gorgeous color. She did not look lighthearted, but she did not look afraid, either.

"We were not able to capture the Avatar from the Captain's cells," said Angharad. "I'm sorry. I know that he's the only reason why you came, and I know how long you've searched and how much you've struggled to find him, but we couldn't."

That explained why the others were afraid of Zuko hurting her, then. He was, again, ashamed at how well-known he was for his temper. He dimmed the flame a little more. Now her face was orange in the light. "Why couldn't you steal him back along with the weapons?" he said.

Angharad hesitated, but only for a moment. "Because," she said, "he was never here."

Zuko had been in Australia for six months, crisscrossing the land on a shit motorbike that gave out at seemingly every opportunity, and he had been with Angharad's people for half that time. He had fought with them, nearly died with them, and at a million different times in a million different ways, trusted them. Because he had to, sometimes. Other times, because he'd chosen to. Angharad had been a big part of that. Six months, sunburn and heat stroke, snake bite and firefight, all for the Avatar. He should have been shocked, betrayed. He should have been raging.

"I know," he heard himself say.

There was a note of admiration in her voice when she said, "For how long?"

"I suspected, almost from the start. Dag let something slip. She isn't a good liar."

The way Angharad was studying him, Zuko felt horribly exposed. "Why help us, then?" she finally said.

 _Because I have to track down every possibility, no matter how small,_ he should have said, but then—the ship was coming for him tomorrow morning. What did it matter? He would shudder later, thinking of this conversation, perhaps. But perhaps he'd regret it if he was less than honest, too. Uncle Iroh probably had a wise old saying about situations like this, but Zuko couldn't think of one. Something in favor of honesty, probably. "I did it because I wanted to," he finally said.

 _I have a son,_ she had said, when he asked her about the tattoo on her shoulder, and later on, _I'm doing it for Nico,_ and then, much later, months later, _When I was younger, when I was a wife, he used to want me to stay clean. He wanted all of us to stay clean. And there was always this pool of water in our chamber, and I hated our chamber but I loved that pool so much. I used to sit on the floor of it and hold my breath for as long as I could. My best time was three minutes, forty-nine seconds. Thirty seconds in, my lungs would burn, and two minutes and fifteen seconds in, my stomach muscles would go crazy, and three minutes in, I felt lightheaded, and then when I finally pushed to the surface and took a breath, it felt so good. Some things hurt for no reason. Some things hurt because other people are cruel. Some things hurt and only made me weaker. But this was the one thing that I chose, that hurt, and that made me stronger._ At that moment, all Zuko had been able to think about was the crosshatching scars on her face, which had so drawn his attention first because he thought they had been like his, the marks of someone else's cruelty. They were, still. But he had a more accurate idea of whose hand had cut them.

Angharad had been quiet for a long time after that. He had touched her arm and she had allowed it. _On better days, I would just float,_ she had finally said. _I loved that pool so much. And Furiosa hated it. She was disgusted at me, floating in water when some people below were dying of thirst. But I couldn't do anything about it, back then. I couldn't even leave the room, hadn't for three years. Well, now I've left the room, and the pool is empty. I came to the coast to build up the seawater distillery, so Nico never dies of thirst. But also, I came so that the pool might be filled again. I want him to swim in it and not feel guilty. I want him to float until his tiny little toes look like raisins. I'll teach him how to swim._

Back then, just like now, Angharad had looked at Zuko like she was asking a question. Not a question that she knew that answer to. Tentative like she never was, vulnerable like she never was, and he, the fool, had leaned in.

Well, he wouldn't make that mistake again. His cheeks were burning almost as much as his palm was, and still Angharad was staring at him, and if he were not the son of the Firelord, by trial and terror as by blood, he would be writhing under those eyes.

One wild thought drifted in and out, something about the soil in which flowers grow. An old saying about honesty, too fragmented and too late. Zuko felt helpless, but he knew he wasn't.

"With the Captain and his idiots—" Zuko refused to call that rabble of thugs _soldiers—_ "gone, Nico can learn to swim. Not in a freshwater pool, not yet, but when you build New Citadel, he can join you. And until the seawater distillery is ready, he can swim in the sea."

Zuko was not looking at Angharad. He was desperately not thinking about her, either, or at least not thinking of touching her. He was thinking that he finally understood what Uncle Iroh had tried to tell him many times before—that it was possible to love someone hard enough to leave them behind, like his own mother had. Earlier, he had thought that it was another one of Iroh's attempts at kindness, a series of lies meant to sweeten the hard truth, but now. He thought of Angharad with her son on the beach and safe, far from him, and he wanted it so badly.

She was as fierce and proud a leader as he had ever met, and she needed nothing from him, but if he could keep one threat away from her, it would be worth the cost. It would be good, he told himself. From start to finish, helping Angharad and her people was the one thing he could say he'd done in his life that was unequivocally good. Leaving was part of that. It was something to be proud of. So why, in the name of the sun and the moon, did he feel so wretched? It was lucky that he had nothing left to say. He couldn't have spoken if his life had depended on it. The fire in his hand flickered out.

The silence drew on only for a little while, he only had to endure it for a little while, before her slim-fingered hand was on his ankle, sending sparks all the way up through him. After a moment, he covered her hand with his own.

Angharad's voice, when it came, was a quiet offering. "You could help teach him how to swim, too."

Her son. Zuko tried to imagine it. How long had it been since he had seen a young child? All Angharad's people kept their children in the Citadel, where Zuko had never gone, and nobody else in this hellscape had managed to keep children alive, as far as he knew. What he could remember of children from the Fire Nation was that they were fragile, that their fingers were absurdly tiny, that they trusted easily. Too easily. Not like Angharad, who was, nevertheless, sitting in front of him saying plainly that she would trust him with her son. Saying she would trust him with more than her life. And he could do it too. He would be so careful.

Zuko shook his head, then realized she couldn't likely see that, dark as it was. He swallowed hard and forced himself to speak. "If I don't get on that ship and report back to my father by the lunar New Year, he will send more people to come looking for me."

"Your father?" Angharad said it very gently, so gently that Zuko realized he had not ever used that word with her before. He had spoken about the Firelord, but that was different than speaking about his father. Absurd, but true. 

"Your husband is dead; my father is not," Zuko said. "And he has armies." Somehow, despite the imbecile simplicity of his words, despite a myriad of differences between them, Zuko felt sure that Angharad understood his meaning. It was a safe thing.

She thought about that for a while. Her thumb arced back and forth over his ankle, slowly. "Is he immortal?" she finally said.

"No." It felt like the wrong answer, but then, Zuko had always felt, deep down, that his grandfather the Firelord had been immortal too, and look how that had turned out. Still, trying to imagine a world without his father in it was impossible.

Angharad's voice was steady. "Then your father will be dead, one day, and you and I will live on."

"You don't know that." Zuko's didn't crack, for which he was grateful.

Angharad slipped her hand out from under his, and there was one split second of cold and regret before she was touching his cheek. By some small miracle, he didn't flinch away, and presently both her hands were cupping his face, warm. He did not need firelight to know how close she was. They were nearly nose to nose. He had not expected this—daydreamed, maybe, but never expected it—yet the way she held him was so like her, so quietly confident, that there would be no second-guessing. And he would crumble in her hands, soon, if she didn't stop it. He cast about for the reason to stop, a reason he was quickly forgetting, and finally found it again: "That ship is still coming."

"And you'll board it, I know, but we have the rest of the night." Very close, now. He could feel her breath whispering against his skin. And then, a moment's hesitation. She lifted her hands away. "Do you need to sleep?"

"No," said Zuko, clasping her wrists because he couldn't stand hearing himself say _don't go_. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, and despite the night air, he was sweating. "Do you?" 

In answer, Angharad kissed him.

After a moment, she pulled back, and then it was his turn to lean in, and every kiss that followed grew more urgent until he learned that her lips tasted like saltwater and her skin was cold. Carefully, with all the skill he had, he warmed his palms against her neck. He had always hoped that he would become a better firebender out in the wilderness, that he would discover some wild magic or some long-forgotten lore that would bring him back to the palace blazing with undeniable power. And yet here it was, the most vital thing he had learned, his hands on her skin, not to burn her, only a delicious warmth like tea in winter or a new-drawn bath. He hadn't known until now that his own firebending could be like this. He hadn't known he could be like this. When he left, she wouldn't have even one hair singed. And he would carry this memory with him back across the ocean, stamped invisibly on him, indelible as a tattoo: the soft sigh Angharad made at the flare of warmth in his hands, the way she surged into him, her fingers in his hair.


End file.
